RE: Firewall recommendations?

["Clark, Steve" <Steve () clarksupport com>]

I will comment on support - the Netscreen side is a PITA if you get the
wrong person. I had routing problems and explained the issue over and over
during business hours support yesterday. Regardless of what I said, the
engineer swore that was the right way to do it - I insisted it was not. He
blamed the ISP - I proved him wrong.

That is not the typical call - usually, they are extremely proficient.

regards,

Steve Clark 
Clark Systems Support, LLC 
AVI-EWS Charter Member 
"Who's watching your network?" 
www.clarksupport.com 

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-----Original Message-----
From: Bhavin [mailto:bhavin () securematics com] 
Sent: Tuesday, March 11, 2003 7:08 PM
To: sflist-secbasic () reliance net; security-basics () securityfocus com
Subject: RE: Firewall recommendations?

I have no comments on the technical support of NetScreen but there is one
more thing to be considered.
As  a tech support engineer for both the products (SonicWALL as well
NetScreen), NetScreen has more features compared to SonicWALL. You ask it
and NetScreen has it. 
Thanks,
Bhavin.


-----Original Message-----
From: John Tolmachoff [mailto:sflist-secbasic () reliance net] 
Sent: Monday, March 10, 2003 10:48 AM
To: security-basics () securityfocus com
Subject: RE: Firewall recommendations?

While I see people recommend NetScreen, I can not based on my experience
with their techs, which includes level 2 techs.

While researching options for a firewall for a client, none of the techs at
NetScreen that I talked to could answer a basic question: Does NetScreen
firewall do stateful packet inspection? 5 different techs, including a
senior lead tech, could not answer yes or no. (The fact that it does is not
the point here, the knowledge by their techs is.)

We have 9 Sonicwalls installed and am very happy with them. (Clients and
in-house.)

The comment about ISA server in a environment where security is at most, I
would recommend a primary firewall, such as a Sonicwall, as the first line
of defense, (with a DMZ behind that in Normal Mode,) then ISA server between
the DMZ and the Internal LAN.

ISA is an excellent product for integrating with a LAN. However, as someone
else said, when it comes to security, there is on one end-all product.

John Tolmachoff MCSE, CSSA
IT Manager, Network Engineer
RelianceSoft, Inc.
Fullerton, CA  92835
www.reliancesoft.com